Day 9: I’m going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee
Memphis looks a kinder, gentler place in daylight, but only just. I must admit to disappointment, I really expected to enjoy Memphis more but perhaps the reputation and guide book warnings got to me. However perhaps this wasn’t misplaced, on Beale Street there is a never closing Police Museum. I wandered in and found a long litany of crime and criminals associated with Memphis – for instance – Machine Gun Kelley was not only a native of Memphis, he was captured there with his wife Katherine (remember the James Taylor song?).
While on the subject of James Taylor, it is remarkable the way nearly every male country singer starts their ballads sounding exactly like Taylor. Anyway I was able to stand on the very same weighing scales that the Memphis PD used to weigh Kelley when they finally arrested him in circa 1931. Kelley’s photographs show him to have been – in appearance at least – a nice family man; perhaps it really was the influence of a bad woman!
Memphis is also the city where Martin Luther King as assassinated – but until I got to the Police museum, I saw no mention of it – not even in the Rough Guide. It’s almost as if it’s such a source of shame that the city can’t bear to recall it (apart from a Martin Luther King Parkway – but other cities have those). James Earl Ray, the assassin, still languishes in a Tennessee jail – I recall a documentary on British TV which suggested that the lack of parole opportunity was as much about preventing Ray from casting aspersions against the Memphis police as it is about not wanting to upset Black sensibilities. The suspension of 3 senior Memphis detectives on corruption charges today may indicate that not all is well in Memphis law and order even after 30 years or so.
I managed to get into the Memphis Blues Museum near Beale Street early, since it had opened early to accommodate a bus party of pensioners from Iowa. After they left, I had the whole place to myself.
The Museum covers post 1940 Memphis (there is another one covering pre 1940). It is an excellent showcase of all the main stars and is well displayed and documented. There are guitars contributed by various people – including John Mayall’s Telecaster, which he donated in 1990 but which he used during the 1960s and 70s – it was the guitar he was using in Sophia Gardens, Cardiff on November 19th 1979 when Terry Chewins and I went to see him – just a week off 25 years ago.
Again I had to choke back the tears at the memory of the joy that Terry and I shared that evening (Terry was killed in a car accident less than 10 years later in 1978 and just after graduating from Cambridge). I could have spent all morning looking at that one exhibit, let alone in the museum as a whole.
Gracelands, about 10 miles south of Memphis, is a real enigma. The area surrounding it, like so many city approach roads in the USA, is full of petrol stations, motels and fast food outlets, with the added Elvis connotations.
Graceland itself and the Visitor Plaza opposite is, by contrast, neat and tasteful.
Unfortunately, Tuesday is the day that the Mansion itself is closed so I didn’t get in to the House but I did have a pleasant walk in the grounds and around the Visitor Plaza.
As a memorial, the whole thing is really well done – there is a series of shops, an automobile and airplane museum and a cinema. The cinema shows a non-stop 30 minute compilation film called “walk a mile in my shoes” which I saw and was impressed by (no commentary) it’s purely a compilation of film clips and interviews which (as I suppose it’s intended to do) left me with a good feeling.
At the Graceland meditation garden – next to the house itself – Elvis and his family are buried (or, in the case of his mother, grandmother and himself, reburied). I had the weirdest thought for a second that I was as close to Elvis (i.e. about 8 feet) as most people ever got! A sick thought, I know, but there we are.
At the gates to Graceland, there is a security gatehouse and inside the gatehouse, one of the guards seemed to be making an attempt on emulating Elvis – he was huge and eating a hamburger when I walked in and when I walked out. Very soon they’ll have to either leave him there or demolish the gatehouse around him.
Since Gracelands interior was closed, I hit the road West early, I can’t say I was sad to leave Memphis or to get on the road again.
Crossing the Mississippi River was a bit of an anticlimax – the river at Memphis isn’t as wide as I expected it to be and it had a light mist over it. Nevertheless as soon as you cross the bridge you feel that there is something different – you’re starting to get into the West.
Arkansas has a nice feel to it – its fairly flat but not without features – particularly fields and farms along the road. I put cruise control, put a tape in and let the 200 miles to Little Rock roll away.
Little Rock, which I didn’t intend to stop at, looks quite busy form the Interstate – a loot of traffic, big ‘skyscrapers’ and formal buildings – so I went in. I drove around until I got to the city centre – I think if found it closed! There were very few people on the streets – the buildings had their lights on and there were cars in the streets – but I couldn’t find any shops or any real signs of life! It really did look closed – as if I’d turned up on the ½ day closing day – yet it was only 3.30pm!
It occurred to me that Arkansas is such a nice state that no-one can be bothered with cities. Later I asked the manager at the hotel about Little Rock – he said that if you liked cities you wouldn’t live in Arkansas. I can believe it!
I drove down the Interstate for a while then turned cross country to Hot Springs – a spa town in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.
Hot Springs is like Llandrindod Wells with people!
I got into the Arlington Hotel, the main spa hotel and a monument to the1930s/1940s style – its so much like the Metropole in Llandrindod Wells as to be uncanny.
The Arlington Hotel was also a favourite haunt of Al Capone in the 1920’s and 1930’s – in fact he used to have a room just above mine!
The Arlington was originally built in the 1870’s but the current was opened on the 31st December 1924 – one day after my Dad was born!
I went out for a meal to a local restaurant – Café New Orleans – a Cajun version of Mulligans (a nice restaurant in Cowbridge that we liked at the time). They even served mushy peas as the veg. of the day but described them as Oklahoma Peas – so now we know!
Hot Springs was first visited in 1804 by an expedition sent out by Thomas Jefferson (Why? Didn’t he like them?) But they got here only to discover a cabin already here but with no sign of the occupants.
It occurs to me that some poor man left the Old World to try and get some solitude, found Virginia already inhabited and travelled 1000 miles west to find Hot Springs – then one day, who should turn up but an emissary from the President. I’ll bet he was watching from the bushes and headed west again straight away.
